


(Flowers are) the Shadows of Stars

by Esmeraude11



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Age, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24477283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmeraude11/pseuds/Esmeraude11
Summary: Better to be sad and wistful than angry and miserable. Elwing didn't know if she could bear to part with the gem. For her own sake. If not her people's.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	(Flowers are) the Shadows of Stars

_It had been a mistake._

She had known it the moment that the words had left her mouth.

The Fëanorian messenger's expression had hardened. Something like pity had flickered in the woman's eyes as she'd given a shallow bow. Low enough to show the minimum of respect warranted by the local realm's reigning monarch. But not so low as to be taken for submission on her own part.

Just enough to be polite in a foreign court.

Her lords, however, had been pleased.

They had argued against the messenger's offer. The Havens had need of the jewel. It kept their waters pure. Its fields fertile. Its people strong and healthy in spite of the Enemy's long shadow.

Her father's gem...the _Fëanorians'_ gem whispered in her mind. Of sweet laughter and flashing eyes. Shining like silver in the moonlight. Of a fierce pride and even fiercer love. A face, pleasant and lovely to look upon, smiling in her mind's eye. Long red-hair drawn up into a messy bun. A woman near as tall as Galadriel herself with greenish-grey eyes like the long slender stalks of the moonlit river-grass that ran along the length of the River Sirion.

She was no true beauty.

None would claim this woman as Lúthien's equal. Nor would they sing songs of her beauty in lamentation for its loss.

Nor was she even as lovely as Dior's queen was said to have been. Elwing could not remember her mother's appearance. Neither the color of her hair or the shape of her brows. Let alone her smile. Celeborn and Oropher had told her stories nevertheless. But this image that the jewel showed her was different. This was something that Elwing could actually _see_. Not something that she needed to imagine within the confines of her own mind. Images formed from half remembered conversations with her cousins. Never knowing if the images conjured by her mind were right or not.

There was a warmth in the unknown woman's eyes. An understated beauty in the sweet curve of her smile and the particular way she carried herself. Something that she'd never quite seen directed towards her by the members of her court.

Her lords all thought of her as the child she'd once been still. She was a grown woman now. Young though she was. The price, perhaps, of being half-elven among the Elves. Old enough among Men. Still young enough that if she were not a child of Lúthien and Beren's line she would have been exactly that.

A child.

She was mother to two young boys. But her long-lived lords still saw the tiny rambunctious child that loved to race through river-grass and corn stalks. Fleeing her long-suffering caretakers and giggling all the while. A tiny brilliant spot of happiness for her weary and aching people.

She could not begrudge them this. No matter how it frustrated her to be placated with a smile and fond pat on the hand.

Though....she might have seen the woman's exact expression mirrored in Celeborn's eyes and the subtle flash of white from trailing sleeves as he snuck her pasties before lunch and dinner. In the brightness of Oropher's smile and his outstretched hands.

Elwing couldn't remember her father. The shape of his face. The way he must have smiled. She knew that she shared her coloring with him. With fabled Lúthien and her mother the Queen of Doriath. Her cousins had done their best in the aftermath of Doriath's fall. And...she remembered. She had tried to call them father once. Oropher had paled then. His ever-present smile falling as grief and conflict flickered within cornflower blue eyes. Celeborn had been the one to correct her. Careful and gentle in the way he always was with her. His hands warm and voice sad.

Her father was dead. Long-gone into the Halls of Mandos. Forever lost to them should they remain on this side of the Sundering Seas.

They were her cousins. Nothing more. Nothing less.

She had decided against repeating the experience after that.

Not when it caused Oropher such pain and brought sorrow to Celeborn's eyes.

It wasn't worth it really. She had never had a father. Had no true need of one when she had her cousins to rear her and care for her. To fuss about after her as a child when all she'd wanted was to run through the fields of river-reeds that sheltered their home by the mouth of the river. Better she be their sister in all but name than bring undue pain to the two men that had raised her.

Nevertheless, the things that the jewel showed her made her think of the woman who had born her. Made her wonder for the emptiness that lingered in her mind where memories should have been. Elwing had no personal memory of her parents.

She was motherless and fatherless.

An orphan of Doriath.

The Sindar's lonely little Queen.

She had been three when the Fëanorians had attacked Doriath.

Her human heritage meant that she had been a toddler at that age. Having grown faster than a normal Elven child might. Oh, how that must have worried Celeborn and Oropher. How different she must have been. How much more carefully they must have treated her. For mortal children were delicate creatures. And she was Beren's grand-daughter. Her father's only surviving child. Their last little cousin.

Elven memories were long. But Elwing was of human descent. She'd been far too young to truly remember anything past the fear of displacement. The fear that her retainers and guards had carried that day. The traumatic separation from her nursemaid lingered in her memories where her mother's laughter no longer echoed within the shadowed halls of her mind. Doriath had fallen and Elwing did not even know of the things that had brought her father joy.

But the gem, her father's gem, the Fëanorians' gem, had been her constant companion since infancy. Since the fall of her grandfather's kingdom.

It whispered to her in the darkest of nights. When sheets were drawn over a small head to dim the gem's light and prevent it being seen by a guard or nurse. Of a man, dark-haired and silver eyed, whose greatest love had been a woman with long red hair and broad shoulders. A woman whose strong muscular form was often covered in stone dust. Someone who smiled as easily as she laughed. A babe often on her hip or in her arms as she allowed herself to be brought into the man's embrace. Leaving fond kisses and smearing dust onto his heavy leather apron. Likewise finding herself subjected to soot on her wrinkled clothes as strong hands drew her closer.

It shared with her memories of a happy family.

 _Of a father:_ a man who tucked his children into bed. His proud breathtakingly lovely face set in a gentle smile as he peered down into their beloved little faces. A man who painstakingly taught his children crafts and arts that Elwing had not been allowed to learn. The Havens resources were so few. Their manpower so diminished. So few were their people and so very new to their home. None could be spared to teach the young queen. Not when all able hands were needed in the fields and waters or in the haven itself. She was left to lie fallow. To mind herself save when Celeborn and Oropher had time enough to spare for lessons on court politics and statecraft.

The Lords of the Sindar could not claim themselves separate from their own people. Not after the fall of Doriath. Not when every able hand was needed for their people’s survival. They could not spare anyone in those early years. For they were too proud and scared to ask for help from the Noldor that had originally settled the Havens. Could not bear to leave themselves open to even the Noldor's High King Gil-Galad. No matter his friendship with Círdan the Shipwright.

The Lords and Ladies of the Sindar had learned to turn the earth, hunt game, and fish in the rivers same as the lowest of their people. These tasks made all the harder by the differences between the flat marshlands of the Havens and the shadowed forests of Doriath.

Elwing had taught herself needlecraft with painstaking care from the glimpses of lessons the gem allowed her. The servants had given her embroidery needles and used spools of thread when they could so that she might entertain herself. She'd bloodied many of her sheets with pricked fingers before she'd first beheld the fruits of her labor.

A glittering silver-white star in the likeness of her gem.

It had caused faces to pale and eyes to widen. Elwing had returned from wandering and playing in the reeds to find that her sheets had been returned, picked clean of thread. She'd been scolded for it. Half-heartedly. But scolded nevertheless.

She'd learned to hide her works after. It was safer that way.

Elwing had a small chest full of embroidered items that she'd pass onto her sons when they were older. She wanted them to have something of her own making should she die as the rest of their family had. She didn't want them to remember her solely from another's shared memories. Better that they have things they could hold. Items that she'd toiled over and carefully sung words of power into.

She'd made their blankets herself. From choice scraps of embroidered fabrics.

She wanted them to look at the sheets in their hands and know her by her crafts if not by their own memories. She’d spent many hours bent over them. Small hands carefully choosing and sliding squares into place. Filling the blankets with the downy feathers that Eärendil had spent hours hunting waterfowl for. The birds had gone to the kitchens. Their feathers to her. She'd folded the finished products and hidden them away in her chest. For later. For the day the children were too big for the smaller pair of blankets currently taking up their beds. She'd begun making them when the first dreams of laughing grey-eyed boys came to her in her sleep.

She wanted them to look at the sheets in their hands and know her by her crafts if not by their own memories.

She could only hope that Elros and Elrond loved her as much as she loved Celeborn, Oropher, and the beautiful strangers that the Silmaril had given her. She hoped that they would come to cherish the things she'd made them the way she cherished her jewel. For its connection to Dior and to the man that had created it.

Elwing could only hope that her creations might survive her. That the children might be able to have something of hers should she die before she could see them fully grown.

 _Of a mother:_ a kind woman who didn't bend quite so easily to her children's whims. Not as her husband did. She had laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. Calluses on her fingers. She brought her little children to sit between her legs and taught them to shape their thoughts on clay. To bring stone to life underneath little hands. Taught them to grind stones, roots, flowers, and shells and mix them into paints.

Things that she'd taught herself in the quiet of her rooms to the best of her abilities.

Hunting the riverbank for things that she might coax into paints. Sinking small hands into the banks and drawing river clay from its watery depths. A subpar material but one that had allowed Elwing to amuse herself for hours at a time before she needed to return home.

How could she relinquish her father's gem?

The only surviving artifact of her family's keeping that had survived Doriath's destruction?

How could she relinquish the gem that shared images of a family that she'd never known but longed to be part of?

To have a mother that smiled. A patient figure to teach her how to sculpt and mold and smooth. To discern quality paints from the chaff. A kind woman whose love was strong and solid. Unchanging and never-ending. A father to love her and tell stories at her bedside. To run his hand over her hair and tuck into bed. To teach her arts and crafts and sciences. Anything and everything under Anor and Ithil's light.

It was all she'd known of such a thing. She had never needed parents. Not when she had cousins Celeborn and Oropher to care for her all her life. To love and fuss over her children as they'd fussed over her as a child. But she'd wanted them. Wanted someone to love and adore her in the way that Idril and Tuor had Eärendil in those brief honey-sweet years that they had dwelled in the Havens before sailing for Valinor.

She knew who these strangers were.

Knew whose parents they were.

Their children had stolen her parents' lives. Destroyed her people's kingdom.

She had no right to think fondly of the ones who had sired and born them into the world.

But....she could not deny the sweetness of what she'd been shown. The feelings that it had awoken within her.

She had no memory of her parents. Elwing desired to meet them. To see herself in her father's face. To discover for herself if she shared her mother's smile. If the particular way her nose scrunched with emotion did indeed belong to her mother as Oropher swore. To hear them laugh and draw them into her arms. But...she had no true memory of them to cling to.

Had nothing but the shadow of another's memories to show her what parents might look and sound like.

The Silmaril's light was soft and sweet.

It lingered in her heart and settled gently within her mind. Nurturing those secret longings as well as it did the crops in the Havens' fields and the sweet pools of water that split off from the river by their settlement.

It soothed her with the voices and faces of people she'd never met but knew nonetheless.

_It had been a mistake to deny the Fëanorians._

But Elwing could not fathom releasing the gem into their care. Her children had no grandfather to love them. No grandmother to teach them. None save the dead and those who haunted her own mind. She wanted to be selfish. Just this once. To keep her children at her side and the precious jewel that her father had died for. To keep its stories of a fallen prince and his beloved.

Of a man that she might call father in the privacy of her mind. Someone she could look to when the emptiness of her losses threatened to swallow her. A woman that she might call mother. People that she'd claimed long ago in the darkest depths of her heart. People either long dead or too far and all the stranger to her. For they did not know her.

But she knew them.

Elwing did not know if she would ever go so far as to call the Fëanorians 'brother'. Not when they'd caused so much pain to the people around her. Not when her own little brothers, those boys who should have been her elder, had died at their peoples hands. But a part of her might call their parents her own. For she knew them. Loved them. If only because of the Silmaril.

She'd grown up watching them raise their own brood of little children.

Elwing knew them as well as she knew the swollen banks of the river in springtime. The mouths of the Haven in the sweetly scented summer humidity. Full of colorful blooms and swaying reeds. Bright chirping birds and chattering otters. She knew them better than she knew her own parents. For what were stories and recollections next to living memories? She could be bitter. Could be cruel. She could even be shrewd. But it took too much energy to be angry. There was no reason to be angry over things that had already come to pass. Things that she had no true recollection of. Not when she could do nothing to change them.

Better to be sad and wistful than angry and miserable.

Elwing didn't know if she could bear to part with the gem.

For her own sake.

If not her people's.

Her choice to refuse the Fëanorian's messenger had been a _mistake_ and it was one that Elwing knew she could not take back. She could not say that she would have chosen differently if given the chance. The gem was too precious. It was all that she had left. Of her father. Of Doriath. Of that wonderful dream that had haunted her all her life. Never quite fulfilled despite the loving presences in her life.

Elwing was thirty-five years old. Young still. But old enough to call herself an adult among Men. Little more than a child in the eyes of the Elves. She wanted to be selfish just this once. To choose and be chosen in return. To cling to the jewel the same as her husband clung to his hopes and dreams. She wanted what Eärendil had once. The jewel had brought her that with those bright crystal-clear images.

_How could she be expected to give that away?_

**Author's Note:**

> I've tagged this as Canon Divergent just because of the Silmaril. I hate tagging. But gosh. I love fics that touch on the possibilities with the Silmarils. And the fact that Elwing was exposed to the Silmaril practically from infancy leaves so many possibilities. Both good and bad.
> 
> I also really loved touching on Elwing's relationship with Celeborn and Oropher in this fic. And just...really loved exploring her relationship with her parents (or lack thereof), their deaths, and how that affected her relationship with Oropher and Celeborn. With the very concept of parents. And how the Silmaril and its influence via Fëanor's memories/experiences affected her. I want to touch on her relationship with Galadriel. Hopefully, I'll get an idea for that at some point.
> 
> I also really wanted to focus on Elwing's relative youth, the hardships of the Sindar adapting to the Havens/the loss of their home, and the potential of her growing up sheltered and fairly coddled. The way that the trauma touched her and affected her but didn't really linger because of her youth at the time. Rather affecting her through others in her life.
> 
> Someday, I'll write something that touches on my ideas of Eärendil's own trauma re: the Fall of Gondolin and his parents sailing to Valinor. Cause he was so young still.


End file.
